


Together

by InsidetheLocket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsidetheLocket/pseuds/InsidetheLocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has one year before he's dragged to Hell. But in his dreams, and with his brother, he could go there on his own terms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during Season 3. I intended this to be platonic, but whatever floats your boat.

He would never ask. Not out loud anyway.

It was too much, and Sam was too good, too hopeful, to even consider it; and Dean didn’t want to deal with the fallout after he refused.

“One year” in technical terms always seemed like a large time measurement, but as each one passed, three-hundred sixty-five seemed to become a smaller and smaller number. In any case, it might as well have been the blink of an eye now. If not for Sam he probably would have let something get the jump on him so he could get the jump on death—on his own terms. He knew that Bobby’s demand that he not “do anything stupid” was probably in regard to those thoughts more than to making a deal with a demon.

The little voice was always buzzing in the back of his head: Drive a few feet too far. Lean forward a little. React slower. Act more reckless. Maybe you’ll finally get a break. It terrified him, sure, so he shoved them away as much as he could. Even if going out in a blaze of glory was his general M.O., making it intentional wasn’t. Or at least he didn’t think so. He had been around death and misery his entire life; they were like two old friends who didn’t get the meaning of “hit the highway.” Maybe all this meant that he could be done with them soon.

In truth, the thought of Hell did not leave him in cold sweats. Not the way that leaving Sam alone on this Godforsaken rock swarming with the sons of bitches that killed their friends and family did. And if he was at full disclosure, it was his deepest, most selfish and earth shattering dread of being on a separated from his brother. If it tore Dean apart to be in another state, screw the demonic presence, screw eternity, torture, and fear: Hell would only be Hell because Sam was on another plane.

It wasn’t until the dream that he acknowledged the idea fully. It could just have been the way his subconscious pictured it, but it wouldn’t be hard, not with Sammy there beside him. They could park under some stretch of sky full to bursting with stars, drinking beer in comfortable silence, because they both knew that there was nothing to be said that they didn’t know already. Hell, maybe Sam would reach out and grab his hand like he used to do when he was little. Dean would point out their favorite constellations and make up names and stories for the ones he couldn’t remember and the ones that weren’t recognized by the astronomical community, and Sam would go with it whether he knew better or not. It didn’t matter, because they were together. And Dean might feel a little sick when Sam asked if he was ready, but he’d say yes because he was. He always had been. They would scoot a little closer and turn on their sides, and it would be surreal, a pipe dream, one with bullets and blood and pain—but one that they could both come down from if they both squeezed a little harder with the fingers they pointed at themselves in regards to all the things that must have been their fault.

“On three.” Steady, reliable Sam.

“One.” Shaking, determined Dean

They would close their eyes, the last thing they saw would be one another. Clean. Smiling. Calm.

“Two.”

God’s _not_ in his heaven, all’s _wrong_ with the world, but two brothers with nothing to their names but what fit in the trunk of a car didn’t need either of those.

“Three.”

Dean woke silently with tears in his eyes and what felt like a hand around his throat. That was the first good dream he had woken up from in months; maybe even years. And there were only thirty-four days left of his last one.

The stillness of that motel room somewhere in Louisiana as he stared at his brother in the adjacent bed was the most profound he had ever experienced. Sam was quiet. Peaceful. Actually resting instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off in a desperate attempt at saving him. It was all he could do not to wake him and ask straight away in the drowsy haze that clung to him still.

When they finally found the shaman Sam had dug up, it was in a rickety, smoke-filled shack covered in beads and various animal bones that looked ready to be swallowed whole by the bayou. The contact high from whatever was in the air wasn’t enough to make Dean miss the words “death transference,” or to keep him from flying off the handle and out of the room upon hearing them.

Sam followed rather sullenly, aware of the rules Dean had established.

“Look, I know you don’t want to—”

“Sam, don’t,” Dean cut him off, exasperated. “We shouldn’t even be here. You know what that bitch said, I’ve told you a thousand times: If I try to finagle a way out of the deal—”

“I die, I know.” Sam returned the favor, “But, Dean, come on, I’m just trying to weigh our options.”

Dean’s gaze pierced his brother’s, neither of them about to back down. “Killing somebody in my place is not an option.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, lips pressed together. He sucked in a quick breath before letting it go through his mouth in a sigh, averting and then closing his eyes. He let his shoulders go slack and jut his jaw toward the ground as he let his head roll slightly to one side.

Though he didn’t seem convinced, he breathed a tired “yeah” as reassurance.

So ended day three-hundred thirty-one. With little more than a month left on earth, Dean was losing hope; not that he had much to begin with. He had faith in Sam, eternal, all encompassing faith, but not in his ability to save him. Whether Dean had faith in his deserving salvation was a resounding “not” in his mind anyway.

He became obsessed with the dream. He knew it wouldn’t be so easy, that Sam would never agree to it, that it wouldn’t solve anything if he did. He knew it was utterly and damningly selfish to even think about dragging his brother with him to the pit, but at least neither of them would be alone. Though he doubted that Sam needed Dean as much as Dean needed him, his words rang true in his ears: “What am I gonna do when your year is up?” Yet another thing to chalk up to his selfishness. Around and around it goes.

When what he thought was their dead father called, Dean left out the detail of what John’s voice sounded like on the other end of a phone as he begged for Dean to kill himself. Along with how unnervingly closely those words reflected the ones already whispering at the base of his skull.

He dreamt of pain, unimaginable, rending, gushing pain, of hellfire and sulfur. He dreamt of losing himself to it, of forgetting who he was, of black eyes and hatred and vengeance. He dreamt of the heavy thuds of a hellhound on his heels in an endless wood.

Alone.

In the worst of his nightmares he was always unutterably, desperately, completely alone.

He woke and they were together and for that he could have sung, but it wasn’t the same. Sam wasn’t really present, and whenever he stopped to offer for Dean to open up he refused. It frustrated them both that he wouldn’t talk, but Sam knew, and Dean knew that if he talked about it everything would come spilling out and the look on his brother’s face would go from concern to shock, even though he would try to hide it. Every time he played the scenario in his mind Sam’s face twisted into disgust and for him to even possibly see that in reality left him gasping and sick. So he kept it to himself.

He taught his brother everything; not that there was much to teach Sam Winchester, but all he knew, he told: how to fix various parts of the car, who to call when he needed help on a case, when he should follow his gut, everything.

On day three-hundred forty-two, when he thought Sam wasn’t looking, he slid the only photo he owned of their mother into a pocket of his duffel bag. Sam saw, though he made no comment. However, he took a walk that night as far from their motel as possible, as far from anything as possible, and screamed at the sky for someone, _anyone_ , to please just help his brother. His prayer rose with the vapor from his mouth, three-hundred miles under the vacuum of space and an apparently deaf God. The acute sting he felt in his lungs was not because of the cold.

Dean didn’t ask the next morning why his voice scratched like an old record or why a fresh layer of mud had dried on his sneakers.

After burying Doc Benton, Dean thought he was almost ready to ask. Three weeks stood between him and the hellfire at the end of his tunnel. With Bela ripped apart by Hellhounds, Dean’s fate solidified for Sam, but his optimism seemed not to falter.

Sam didn’t ask what Dean was looking at when he stared blankly and horrified at nothing. Dean didn’t tell Sam that his hallucinations weren’t just warped faces, but his own warped face. Dead. Demonic. Hanging in a noose.

May 2, 2008. Sam’s birthday. And what a present: Dean’s time was up.

After going over the hare brained scheme for what seemed like the sixtieth time, Sam suggested the impossible.

“Sam. We are not gonna make the same mistake all over again.”

The words began flowing from his mouth like he was talking Sam from a ledge. And he was. He barely knew what he was saying, except for the fact that he couldn’t let him keep the cycle going. He barely listened, as he normally did when Sam had a plan that would work at too high a cost.

“...And if it’ll save you…” Sam trailed off.

“Why even risk it?” He looked up, straight into his eyes. Sam knew something was there, behind his gaze, pleading, struggling.

“Because you're my brother. And because you did the same thing for me.”

A strangled cough of laughter emanated from his throat, “I know, and look how that turned out.” Sam turned, showing his frustration at full force. “All I'm saying—” he swallowed, willing, praying, whatever, for his brother to understand. “Sammy, all I'm saying is that you're my weak spot.”

A jolt went through the younger Winchester, head pivoting and eyes widened, he watched Dean.

Bingo. A corner of his mouth twitched upward, “You are. And I'm yours.”

“You don't mean that. We’re… We're family.” Sam’s throat was working around the hard lump forming under his Adam’s apple.

“I know.” Impending death seems to lend a lot of insight. “And those evil sons of bitches know it too. And what we'll do for each other, how far we'll go.” Dean took a breath, wondering just how far Sam _would_ go. “They're using it against us.”

“So, what, we just stop looking out for each other?”

“No.” He replied bluntly. “We stop being martyrs, man. We stop spreading it for these demons.”

 _Or we could end it. Together._ He thought.

Maybe if he made it happen indirectly it would work the same way.

He held up Ruby’s blade, “We take this knife, and we go after Lilith our way. The way Dad taught us to. And if we go down, then, uh... then we go down swinging.”

One way or another.

Sam agreed. In his quiet, understanding, deflective-when-needed way, he agreed.

When he tried to say goodbye, Dean stopped him. Even in his dreams, he never let Sam say goodbye. Goodbyes were sappy and final and lonely and impossible to take back. But for a moment he could have kissed Jon Bon Jovi because they were kids again when they caterwauled along with his voice. But then he remembered just exactly how perfectly the lyrics fit his psyche.  
For months he wrestled with the words almost drunkenly pouring from Sam’s lips. Would they take him dead or alive?

Dean never got the chance to ask to die his way. He regretted his consideration of making Sam give up everything for him, but as the claws raked through his skin and clacked against his ribs like a washboard he realized just how much he didn’t want to die this way.

The pain was gone for an instant, only long enough for the blood to flee from his face and the ice of separation to drip into his abdomen. Dean’s first utterance in hell, before the torture had even begun, was a desperate cry for his brother.

What Dean never knew was that Sam hadn’t planned on making it out of their last stand alive. Or that it had been Sam’s dream projected onto his mind in that motel room.


End file.
